Bad Wine

Learning what wine flaws smell like

As wine ages, it oxidizes. Just like iron rusts, oxygen converts certain compounds in wine into other, generally less desirable compounds. At a slow controlled rate this creates the complexity of aged wines. When a wine is too old, or has been exposed to too much oxygen either through a faulty closure or too much time in barrel, the aromas and flavors of an oxidized wine tend to recall toasted nuts, brown spices, and other tan flavors.

Oxidized wine is often referred to as Maderized. Madeira is a famous wine that undergoes an intentionally oxidative winemaking process, giving it a unique flavor profile and the ability to age nearly forever.

I have also complained about the "Powerpoint" method of presentation on another one of the threads but it did not garner any response. My guess is management DOES NOT read the responses. I too like to print for reading at leisure. Maybe you can print the full article if you work your way to the end of the presentation.

I really love your daily news articles, they are concise, efficient and informative! I would really like to be able to print these out for future reference, but there doesn't seem to be a way to do this, do you think that will be possible in the future sometime soon?! Thank you.
Linda, Portland, OR

Am I the only one who noticed the grammatical error in the very first sentence of this article: "...more often THEN not..."? Seriously, if you're going to write for a living, please learn the difference between "than" and "then". You lose all credibility right off the bat with such errors.

The question from thomashedstrom is a good one - basically how an off smell can be detected but then seem to disappear. There is a fancy word for this that escapes me, but the olfactory can acclimate to a smell, sometimes quite quickly for some scents, and cease to detect it. I had this demonstrated with a corked bottle - very obvious on the first whiff, but then harder to pick up on the second and third. And I only noticed a strong Brett (bandaid) smell in a Pinot after the second glass - maybe as it opened up, the Brett bouquet became elevated. And, of course, detection levels vary among people, and some flaws, like TCA, are much more obvious in some wines (e.g. Riesling) than others. Taber's "To Cork or Not to Cork" is a deep dive into wine closures, and he hits on several flaws in wine including TCA, reduction, Brett, etc.

The easiest way to tell whether a wine is corked is to detect whether it smells or tastes of cork. You can usually tell by sniffing but either way, this is why the sommelier offers you a taste of the wine before he pours it. Once he's opened the bottle, he's not offering you the opportunity to check whether you've made the right choice between a '74 and a '93, both 'good years' according to the internet page on how to order wine that you looked up before leaving the house. The idea that more than one person in a 100 will have the faintest idea what he's doing in choosing from a wine list of names he doesn't recognise is ludicrous. Buy a wine you can afford (it'll be hugely marked up anyway). If you want to drink red with fish or white with your burger, go ahead. Either way, you have to drink what you chose if it ain't corked, even if your date is wrinkling her adorable nose because of some other perceived defect. You can get advice on what is sweet and what is dry but basically, the quality of your bottle of wine is like the chef's food - pot luck. Bon appetit.

When the cork crumbles as you're twisting the corkscrew, don't necessarily write off the wine inside. My first impression was yuck! But let it breathe & try again...now it's definitely yuck or yum....case closed

Skunky smells can also be compared to very pungent marijuana buds, for those of you in urban areas... although my particular urban area has no shortage of skunks, either.

And while I agree that Greg's copy should see a copy editor besides himself (everyone should have someone proofread them if they are writing professionally), he's writing about wine, not composing a style manual, so let's not say he loses all credibility. Sounds like something a troll from another site might write. Anyone want to trace that TCP/IP address?

Wine enthusiasts should learn first-hand about "corked" early in their wine careers so that they can recognize it immediately and reject the bottle. Unfortunately, that is tough to do, unless a known corked bottle is presented. I have tasted two identical bottles of one-year old wines from a California winery that I know well and respect, only to have the first smell terrible while the second was excellent. Some tasters would never get past the first bottle and would label the whole winery as terrible.

I have also tasted wines (at a Mendosa bulk winery) where ALL qualities suffer from an objectionable odor, obviously from the huge casks that they use for all their wines. (The only difference in qualities is the time in the cask, No barrels are used! They clean the casks every five years!!)

I recommend further reading in "The Oxford Companion to Wine, 3rd Edition ".